Dapper as fuck, Dugger’s boy’s Thursday’s
rink-rattling dandy: skate-sharp, a sauced fashion
plate spun round & wound tight as that fancified cashmere,
as a cool qiviut or the la-ti-da’d knits that fashion
those haberdashed suits he sells fast & hard as short-side
fakes laughed past the gassed, sprawling d-men unspooled
at the hash & left in his wake. His passes—those on-ice
em dashes—as silky or fit-to-be-tied as jaunty cravats
that match the frou-frou’d neon galoshes the staid boys
in the room rib him hard about over beers. That’s not near all
of it, though: there’s the shot sneakily quick, deadly as jeers
from Fairview’s methadoned side streets after ticks on an evening’s
near capped-out clock’s face have finally gone tock. Fancy
man about town, our Ross’s known as much in the room
for the rarified shock of his cornered cologne’s waft each week,
save the odd trip gone, down south, for more work on the tan.
It’s the mouth of the man, the wry-smiled schlocky asides,
that other edge work, as much as deceptive skate’s strides, that
set him apart, leave him floating in & around this room
or that. We all tip a cap.
